I’ve started thinking about my goals for next year. Yeah, know it’s a bit early with still two months left in ‘09, but @coachprs has a bit of a contest going until November 5th… send him your goal race and time for 2010 and he’ll choose someone to receive a free training plan. So, I figured “what the hell?!” Sure, there are plenty of free programs out there, but to have some develop a plan for your needs and to have that someone available to chat adds tons of value over what you’ll find with the one-size-fits-all programs out there.

Two and a Half Goals

1. To continue to drop fat and to reach a goal weight of 210 pounds by June 1, 2010. Yeah, given my current weight, that’s an aggressive goal of 2 pounds per week. A less aggressive goal would be to reach 225 pounds by the time of the 2010 Virginia Beach Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon (September 5th).
   And, why do I want to be 225 pounds (or, hopefully, less) by the time of the ‘10 VB RnR?
2. To achieve a PR (personal record) time for the half marathon. I have “run” one and only one half marathon and that was the VB RnR back in 2006. This was after I had lost 100 pounds in a year and I attempted the half marathon at around 215 pounds. The big problem is that I had done it on no training. Yeah, I finished it, but my legs cramped real bad in the last 2 miles and I was struggling to cross the finish line in 3:03:17. Want to know the embarrassing part? My dad finished less than 30 minutes behind me (3:32:23). What’s so embarrassing about that? He had a broken hip!!! Seriously!?
3. And, my last goal is to complete a triathlon. My biggest limiting factor is my swimming. A local sprint tri that I would like to participate in involves a 1K ocean swim. Considering that I have a hard time finishing 100m in the pool, I think 1K is just a tad outside my reach at this point. I’ve been told that I have pretty good form (for a novice, at least) so my hope is that losing weight and building muscle will be the keys to better performance in the water. I’m listing this as a goal for 2010 to try and push myself to get it done, but I’m thinking that a more realistic goal would be to complete one in the first half of 2011 before my 34th birthday in July.

How?

First off, I plan to continue eating clean. In 2006, by the time the half rolled around, I had lost the weight I wanted to lose so I had started getting sloppy with my diet allowing too many carbs and too many non-paleo/non-primal foods into my diet. That was a very bad decision and led to a downward spiral that lasted these past three years. I intend to keep up my high-fat, moderate-protein, and low- to very-low-carb intake throughout my weight loss and half mary training. I wonder if U.S. Wellness Meats would sponsor me and provide some of their pemmican to this effort?

Secondly, I plan to actually train! You can see my workout logs from the past two and a half months. I’ve made some great gains in my ability to move weight and actually finish a workout. If you look at my first workout log from August 24th, you can see that I struggled to squat 230 pounds after what should have been a light warmup set and an easy second set and 60 seconds of rest between each set. Compare that with my last workout with squats on October 26th (almost exactly two months later). This time, not only did I finish all four sets, they were part of a superset with bent-over rows and with 45 seconds of rest between sets, and my last set was almost 100 pounds heavier than in my first workout. Same thing with my deadlift numbers… first workout had me struggling to lift 90 to 140 pounds while my last workout I had no problem 130 to 200 pounds.

Yeah, most of that is talking about my strength gains, but I’ve had pretty good endurance gains at the same time with no specific endurance training aside from someHIIT sessions after my strength workouts. At the end of September, a week before I added the HIIT sessions, I ran a 5K in 35:40. At the time, I was happy because I did it with no walk breaks. Four weeks and eight HIIT sessions later (a little over 2 weeks ago), I ran another 5K in 32:45 shaving almost three minutes off my time.  Of those eight 19 minute HIIT sessions, only four of them were running workouts and those were all under 2.5K in distance. The other four sessions were split between a stationary bike and a Concept2 rower.

There you have it. My first set of goals for 2010 and a rough idea of how I plan to achieve those goals.